


Without

by Lafayette1777



Category: Dunkirk (2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Gibson is Philippe Hugo Guillet, M/M, Post-Movie, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, World War II, because of course, everything was beautiful and nothing hurt, thanks Aneurin, why are we all collectively sleeping on this ship, yo gibson deserved better
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-01
Updated: 2017-09-01
Packaged: 2018-12-22 15:11:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11969994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lafayette1777/pseuds/Lafayette1777
Summary: "Mon chéri."Silence is louder than words, but only sometimes.





	Without

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [Without 不可或缺](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12007830) by [Jaclyn_R](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jaclyn_R/pseuds/Jaclyn_R)



> it is my personal belief that tommy and gibson fall in love, move to a lovely flat in shades of blue in paris after the war, and enjoy each other's silence as much as their words for the rest of their natural lives. fuck you. 
> 
> thanks for reading!!!!

France is a dream, at first. 

By May, it’s a nightmare. 

The pull backwards seems to go on endlessly—first to the River Lasne, then the Escaut. There are no more games of bridge in the shade of the chateau, no more nights in the village with the local girls. No more routine, no orders. The runners are all dead, as is Tommy’s CO and his replacement, and his replacement’s replacement. 

The surviving group from his regiment dwindles down to next to no one. They ditch the Bren gun, dismantle it and bury the pieces. No ammunition left, anyways. Tommy hits the road, the hot sun on his neck, with only a rifle pulled off another dead man from the battalion and the remains of his own gear strapped to his belt. The way is clogged with refugees, with other soldiers—Brits, Frogs, Algerians, Indians, Canadians—all trotting silently toward the coast, past burnt out lorries and dead horses and craters from where the Stukas have screeched down from the heavens to unleash hell. The sound still vibrates in his bones long after the silhouette of the screaming creature disappears into the horizon.

There are men on the side of the road, in the ditches. Dead, dying. Tommy sees none of them.

He walks. 

Of the ten remaining from the regiment, only five or so make it to Dunkirk with him. Then the snipers open up and he’s running and then it’s just Tommy, walking again, feet sinking into the sand of Bray Dunes. 

And there’s a boy with wide hazel eyes, tying his boots under the wide gray sky. There’s something kindred in his silence, in the steadiness of his gaze. Tommy feels as though they are the same, somehow—one person split into two. It’s a peculiar feeling, especially in a place like this. 

The boy stands; Tommy gets just a glance at his dog tags before they disappear inside his shirt. 

_Gibson._

 

 

The third boy introduces himself as Alex, once they’ve recovered from the night enough to crawl up out of the surf and hunker down in the dunes. 

“Durham Light Infantry,” he’s saying, biting viciously at his thumbnail. “Had to ditch our mortars pretty fast once the Krauts broke through at St. Venant. Got down to just bayonets, eventually...well, you know the rest.”

Actually, Tommy knows nothing about the Durhams. It hardly matters. They’ve all arrived here for the same reason—all made the same pilgrimage to present themselves for judgment before the roiling surf. 

Sometimes, he has a hard time remembering life before this vast expanse of gray.

The sound of the breeze is dampened only slightly by where they’ve dug into the sand. Tommy mutters something about his own regiment to satisfy Alex’s expectant look, but Gibson says nothing, eyes out to sea. It’s not hard to imagine why one might not want to elaborate upon which direction they arrived from, or what happened to the boys they were with. The wind almost fills the silence. 

This isn’t hell, Tommy thinks. It’s purgatory. It’s a Greek myth of epic proportions. Sisyphus rolling a boulder up a hill endlessly. Calypso sailing away from Ogygia only for the island to appear on the horizon yet again. They are doomed to set sail, to sink, to swim back to the beach until the end of time. 

Tommy has been alive for nineteen years; this, he supposes, is his punishment for the arrogance of expecting a twentieth.

He thinks about last night, about being towed back to shore by the too-full whaler, Gibson’s steady gaze on him the whole way. In the morning, Tommy’s fingers refused to release the rope—Gibson had had to peel his hands back while the waves crashed around their ankles, while he’d struggled to stay upright as his legs shook from the chill and the memory of the torpedo’s moment of impact, the soul-splitting crash and the light and then the abrupt, suffocating darkness. He’d known then that he was never getting home, no matter how many destroyers he boarded, no matter how many cork lifejackets he pulled over his ears. Standing in the surf with Gibson—yes, that would be eternity. 

There’s no fear, now. Just exhaustion. 

Gibson stands, after a moment, and points his boots toward what remains of the town. Tommy follows, as he is wont to do these days. Alex has curled up in the sand beneath the greatcoat of a dead Lancashire Fusilier from further down the beach. They leave him to sleep and head for the cobbled streets. 

“Hungry?” Tommy asks, once they’re trotting along a boulevard, shoulder to shoulder. 

Gibson gives a noncommittal shrug, the edge of a smile twisting his lips. 

“Maybe we’ll find something,” says Tommy. 

In a looted pub, they come across a tap in the back room where the water still runs. In the empty apartment above they find a loaf of bread, stiff and dry and tasting of sand. Tommy tucks the last third into his pocket for Alex and crosses the sitting room to the window, parting the thick blackout curtains for a glimpse of the orange sunset. In the distance, smoke from a burning oil refinery conceals part of the mole. The haze seems to cover half the sky, from here. 

The apartment has clearly been turned over by others, judging by the boot prints in the plush rug and the trampled furniture. Still, there’s something a little grand about the tall windows, the heavy drapes, the still-gleaming silk of the sofa. The dark blue of the light at this hour softens the edges of the white kitchen cabinets, casting everything in cool, detached shades of gray. A tall vase on an end table still contains a bundle of wilting summer flowers. There’s a quiet stagnancy to the rooms that Tommy can appreciate. This is the France he thought he knew, the France of a few weeks ago—beaten, but alive, in contrast to the rubble a few blocks away.

And Gibson, damp and ragged but still standing, seems to be one with it all.

He eventually steps around a smashed ironing board to the far wall, where crooked picture frames are still hanging despite the chaos around them. Tommy joins him, after a moment, in front of a photo of a young couple in bathing clothes, standing in front of a familiar looking beach. He can see the mole in the background, unobscured by smoke. There are no corpses half-buried in the sand. 

Scarcely minute later there comes the sound of the nightly artillery barrage starting up—a distant storm lighting the under sides of the clouds, inching toward the perimeter. Gibson makes a sound low in his throat; more of a hum than a word. 

The look he fixes Tommy with transcends language. 

The effect is almost instantaneous. Tommy moves before he thinks, and he’s grateful for such a thing. Their lips crash together with an intensity almost ruthless, and immediately his hands are in Gibson’s hair, tugging him closer, demanding that he pull the air from Tommy’s lungs. Tommy’s back collides with the wall, the floral wallpaper crackling beneath his heaving breaths. A warm hand has snaked its way inside his shirt to rest against his skin; another cups his jaw. His eyes have long since flickered closed. 

It feels good to surrender, for once. 

 

 

“Mon chéri,” Gibson murmurs later, his lips against Tommy’s collarbone. Tommy doesn’t think much of it—a few of the public schools boys from the regiment had spoken passable French, employing it when persuading chateau owners to evacuate or birds to have another drink. The language of love seems to fit where they are now: sprawled across the shining silk of the settee, heart to heart. There’s something particular delicious about the words, about the fact they have spilled forth from Gibson’s mouth. Tommy hardly notices the language; it’s the voice that has him spellbound. 

Tommy buttons his shirt, disentangles his fingers from Gibson’s hair. Then Gibson produces a package of French cigarettes from some crevice of one of the cupboards and rips open the top with a practiced efficiency. 

They smoke for a long moment, settling into the silence. Tommy thinks about _mon chéri_ , looks at the cigarette package. “Thank you,” he says finally, and that’s all. 

 

 

By the time they stumble back to the dunes, Alex has woken up and is looking sullen at having done so alone. The cigarettes are gone, but Tommy passes him the bread without a word and climbs back into his indent in the sand. 

“You see the Jerries?” Alex asks, sharp eyes on Tommy alone. “You were gone awhile.”

“Got pinned down for a bit near the perimeter, had to find a detour.” Tommy shrugs. He once thought himself incapable of deception; here, the lie spills out like water from the tap. 

 

 

Things go sideways. 

_Français. Je suis Français._

In the poultice of oil and fire and panic that his world has become, Tommy doesn’t think. Doesn’t look at anything besides the sea in front of him. The writhing, spasming bodies bobbing in the waves around him are faceless. Tommy finds that he is an empty vessel through which only fear flows through, echoing about in the cavern of his chest. 

It’s only later, once he’s been pulled from the maelstrom by a blonde blur, that he realizes his mistake:

_I’ve left him behind._

In contrast, Alex lives, of course. 

“Me dad always said we come from a long line of tough bastards,” he says, as the sun rises over Dorset. 

Tommy bites his lip and says nothing. His voice would betray him, surely. There’s something raw in his throat. Tommy misses the silence; the weight of it, with Gibson at his side. The tenderness beneath it. At dawn, the space between the living and the dead feels particularly thin—Tommy’s still not entirely sure which side of the veil he now occupies. 

Regardless, he hasn’t seen Gibson. 

By the time they make landfall, he’s feeling a tad shattered. Much like the RAF pilot, the Scotsman, disembarking ahead of them and looking around like he’s lost something essential. Tommy makes a point not to look him in the eye, for both their sakes. Instead, he lets his stare flicker through the mass of stoop-shouldered bodies, searching for a familiar silent, steady gaze. 

“Did he make it?” he forces out, finally. “Did you see him?”

“The frog? Really?” For the first time, it seems like Alex actually doesn’t know what to say. “I dunno.”

Then a familiar hand lands on Tommy’s shoulder, and all the breath leaves his body. 

 

 

 

On the train, they bend their bodies toward each other like ancient, wilting trees. 

“Philippe,” says Gibson, gesturing toward his own chest, his warm breath rebounding off Tommy’s cheek. His eyes swivel the train car fervently, for just a moment, before settling back on Tommy’s smile once he deems them properly ignored by the other boys. 

Alex, having draped himself on the bench seat across the table, is awake and watching them with an unreadable expression. 

“Philippe,” says Tommy, softly. It feels old in his mouth; like he’s spoken it many times before, caught it many times behind his teeth and rolled it many times off his tongue. He just can’t recall when.

Outside, the sun has yet to make it over the tops of the trees. The world passes by in shades of primordial blue. Philippe falls asleep with this mouth agape, his eyelids smooth, his face unguarded. Tommy watches him for a while, to be sure he doesn’t fade away into the blue, and then nods off himself. 

 

 

 

Tommy is aware, on some level, that what they have just stepped out of is not the sort of thing you can stare in the face and come back from. At least, not entirely. He's left something behind, at Dunkirk—a piece of himself, rotting in the sand at Bray Dunes, surrendered to the elements as well as the enemy. He’s aware, also, that this work is unfinished. That _home_ does not mean _safe_ , not in this world. Twenty miles away, across the water, the enemy still waits. The clock is still ticking. 

For tonight, though, the world is on hold. 

They end up boarded at an inn in a seaside village, given the night to collect themselves before returning to service. Tommy doesn’t know what the means for Philippe, and doesn’t know a way to ask. Together, the three of them plough through a week’s worth of rationed bacon and eggs and three packs of cigarettes, then head out for a pint in the smoky twilight of a local pub. The dim room is muted, half empty; Alex is the only one that manages to finish his drink before the abrupt ordinariness of the situation forces them back into the streets, into something not so distant from the reality of yesterday. 

Back at the boarding house, Alex passes out on a sofa in the downstairs sitting room—alcohol on top of exhaustion, Tommy supposes, and he knows that there’s no chance of dragging Alex up the stairs to his room in the state they’re in now. His own bones are heavy enough. 

Philippe touches his elbow, a question in his eyes.

“He’ll make his own way up,” says Tommy, surprised by the raggedness of his own voice. 

Then it’s just the two of them on the stairs, in the corridor leading to their rooms. And Philippe is fixing him with a look that requires no translation. A moment later Tommy realizes that he’s not bound for his own bed, not anymore. 

Tomorrow, he knows, it will all be different. But tonight, he’s falling back against the sheets and Philippe’s lips are against his and there is a warmth on all sides, pressing in toward him with a comforting insistence. _Mon chéri_ , he thinks distantly. Tonight, he’s alive. They both are.

And that’s all he can ask for.

**Author's Note:**

> lafayette1777.tumblr.com


End file.
